A District Court judge in New York has given the final heave-ho to a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case by granting the defendant’s motion for summary judgment over the language used in a communication sent by the defendant to the plaintiff after the plaintiff claimed to be the victim of identity theft.
The Background: The plaintiff defaulted on a credit card debt that was sold. The purchaser of the debt placed the account with the defendant for collection. The defendant filed a collection lawsuit against the plaintiff, after which the plaintiff claimed to be the victim of identity theft. The defendant sent the plaintiff — through his counsel — a fraud packed that contained an identity theft affidavit from the Federal Trade Commission. Rather than supply the information that was requested in the fraud packet, the plaintiff filed suit.
The Ruling: Having previously dismissed some of the claims made by the plaintiff, Judge Lewis J. Liman of the District Court for the Southern District of New York now had a summary judgment motion from the defendant to address the remaining claims.
- After first going into great detail to determine whether the debt at issue was a consumer debt under the FDCPA and whether the communication in question was covered by the FDCPA, Judge Liman dealt with the issue at hand — whether the defendant engaged in false, deceptive or misleading representations when attempting to collect on a debt.
- Ultimately, “no reasonable jury” would reach the conclusion that the letter was a false representation of the character, amount, of legal status of the debt, Judge Liman wrote. The letter “seeks the kind of information that an investigator would customarily seek in connection with an investigation-information regarding how the fraud occurred, the victim’s law enforcement actions, and a copy of any police report.”
- Weakening the plaintiff’s argument is that the letter was sent to his attorney, likely meaning the attorney would have read it and explained it to the plaintiff. “The questions posed and the information requested by the Letter are akin to what counsel for a debt collector would request from counsel for a debtor through interrogatories and document requests in litigation,” Judge Liman wrote. “In that setting, no consumer could believe that the requests themselves were misleading.”
